the usual suspects have been in davos

again at the world economic forum

overseen by klaus schwab

the few hundreds of the most

unimaginably rich gathered in one place

to fantasize together about what the

several billions of us ought to be

forced to do in order to make those

billionaires lives better

those poor billionaires for whom

everything on earth might finally be

perfect if only someone would invent the

vacuum cleaner big enough to suck every

last one of us peasants

inconsequential specks of dust that we

are into outer space once and for all

well listening to which everyone on

stage is pontificating about this or

that technological advance or about how

to better structure civilization itself

i find it best to imagine they have the

high pitched excitable voices of

children liking those tv adverts for

chewy jelly sweeties when i do that i’m

reassured by their evident

ridiculousness the patent lack of a

grasp on the reality of what this human

species of ours is all about

some of their ilk talk blithely about

the millions billions of useless eaters

who might best be controlled and

placated by drugs and video games

i hear it announced that it’s already

time to hack the human animal and

implant technologies to make us better

at being alive in the world

some of them are apportioning to

themselves nothing less than the power

of god

it’s precisely that genetic failing of

theirs demonstrably present in one

billionaire or technocrat authoritarian

after another that will always be their

undoing in the end

that glitch that achilles heel common to

all of them is the failure to note the

still limitless potential of the

unadulterated human being mark one

they think they have as mapped tracked

and traced already but they don’t

there’s another thing they collectively

overlook or deny at least to themselves

while making their plans and cooking up

their little magic potions

and it’s fear their own fear

they’re all but overwhelming fear of all

of us

whether or not they’re aware of it they

are motivated those few hundred richie

richest by fear of the billions of us

they look out at us down on us from

their castle walls

and our presence in all our endless

untidy unpredictable variety and they’re

afraid

they don’t really understand us they

don’t really get us and it’s that which

has made them fearful people always fear

what they don’t understand

when you get right down to it probably

rather we just weren’t here but we are

here we are here and every last one of

us white black or brown tall or short

good at maths or good at growing plants

or good at putting smiles on the faces

of those around us or whichever small

fragment of the miraculous each of us

has within us

every last one of us has the same

unalienable right to a place on this

planet as any one of them could schwab

bill gates whoever has no more right to

be here to live the best life available

here than you or me

you may have heard or read by now about

the slowly boiled frog

it’s that notion that you can put a frog

in a pot of cold water and turn on the

heat beneath

poor frog doesn’t know what’s happening

and so according to the story is slowly

and unknowingly cooked to death

we’re invited to think that we are like

that frog that we are helpless to

identify the danger we’re in far less to

extricate ourselves from our plight

here’s the thing

it’s not true

back in the 19th century a scientist of

sorts removed a frog’s brain and found

it would indeed remain in the steadily

heating water until dead

but much more recently in the 20th

century biologists tried the experiment

with healthy complete frogs and found

that every single one of them left out

long before it was in any real danger

sometimes the frog wouldn’t stay in the

pot even when there was no heat under it

at all

clearly the lesson there is that only

brainless frogs get boiled alive

i would offer here a helpful analogy

we placed ourselves in a pot called the

social contract

this is a way of describing the

relationship we proles have with the

state

put simply under the terms of the social

contract we agreed to behave and do our

bit and in return the state kept us safe

from crime and undue suffering and

protected our rights and freedoms that

was the deal

a while ago though even before the

adventures of covert 19 the state turned

the heat on under the pot

it takes a while and each one of us

frogs becomes aware of the change at a

different moment but sooner or later one

frog after another realizes the water

has become unpleasantly warm and jumps

out

i feel this is what is happening now

that’s what’s been happening for years

more and more healthy frogs with brains

intact are getting out of the pot

turning their backs on the social

contract

for those who thought they could cook us

without us knowing this is a frightening

time the billionaires technocrats and

autocrats can sit together in davos and

squeak excitedly to one another all they

want but they’re in another pot a pot of

their own elitism and the heat under

theirs is rising too

i’m wired to look back in time in search

of answers to problems

given the assumption that there’s

nothing new under this under the sun

that a version of whatever is happening

now has likely happened in the past i

look to see how things played out

nearly two thousand years ago the

caledonians of the north faced off

against a roman army led by a roman

governor called agricola

among much else the roman empire wanted

submission from those people they deemed

lesser inferior according to agricola’s

son-in-law tacitus the caledonians were

led by one they called calgas which

means the swordsman who rallied his

forces with these words or words like

them

to all of us slavery is a thing unknown

there are no lands beyond us and even

the sea is not safe menaced as we are

and thus in war and battle in which the

brave find glory even the coward will

find safety unpolluted by the contagion

of slavery the furthest limits of

britain are thrown open and the unknown

always passes for the marvelous

but there are no tribes beyond us

nothing indeed but waves and rocks and

yet more terrible romans from whose

oppression escape is vainly sought by

obedience and submission

robbers of the world having by their

universal plunder exhausted the land

they rifle the deep if the enemy be rich

they are rapacious

if he be poorly lust for dominion

neither the east nor the west has been

able to satisfy them alone among men

they covet with equal eagerness poverty

and riches they create a devastation and

call it peace

i read about those romans and see the

model for every autocratic empire there

ever was and that ever shall be

from whose oppression escape is vainly

sought by obedience and submission

the romans were the victors of the

battle in question but they never did

win either the submission or the

obedience of those caledonians

the roman empire declined and fell of

course as every empire must empires used

to last for centuries the most recent

last for just years they fall the world

kings faster and faster every time

the strutting peacocks of davos the

world economic forum the united nations

and the world health organization are no

romans but they want our obedience and

submission and have endeavoured to

obtain as much by stealth they thought

we wouldn’t see them wouldn’t see what

they were doing that we wouldn’t feel it

but we did and we do

they sought to exploit our good nature

give the devil is due the social

contract was good while it lasted we had

peace a lot of the time rule of law

personal freedom and protected rights

that passed from generation to

generation

that was then though this is now

now a handful of frightened billionaires

and their enablers seek to make the pot

a prison by the manipulation of fear and

the application of propaganda they want

us to be and to remain forever as

frightened as they are

they tell those of us who’ve noticed

that we’re being silly but nothing of

the sort is happening this is

gaslighting and that is the gas that’s

already lit under the pot

but look at what they’ve done

having slipped and shouldered their way

further and further into our lives every

aspect of our lives they’ve only made a

mess of everything for all their wealth

and their so-called wisdom we’re all

about to get poorer colder and hungrier

already millions have had their health

physical mental or both hopelessly

compromised it’s increasingly hard not

to see this as having been the plan all

along

after all surely no one in authority is

stupid enough to have caused all this

harm by accident

as far as i’m concerned the social

contract has been broken not by we the

many law-abiding tax-paying majority but

by the few of the state of course an

analogy only goes so far we’re not frogs

we are human beings this is our country

our world in the moment we decide

collectively that we have nothing to

fear from those who would take advantage

of our good nature in that moment the

fear is gone and somewhere in their

hearts and somewhere in their heads the

billionaires in davos must know it too